Frankly I think its a great idea to allow for lifetime licenses for amateur radio operators to have their FCC licenses granted for life.

What do you say? If you have an opinion, please use the links provided and let the FCC know. I will do so once this article is written.

The FCC is seeking comments on a Petition for Rule Making (RM 11760) that asks the FCC to grant lifetime Amateur Radio licenses. Mark F. Krotz, N7MK, of Mesa, Arizona, filed his request with the FCC last November. He wants the FCC to revise § 97.25 of its rules to indicate that Amateur Radio licenses are granted for the holder’s lifetime, instead of for the current 10-year term. Krotz noted that the General Radiotelephone Operator License (GROL) already is issued on a lifetime basis, and he maintained that not having to renew licenses would lighten the FCC’s workload.

“It would be mutually beneficial for the FCC and Amateur Radio operators to update Part 97 to grant operator licenses for lifetime,” Krotz said in his filing. “The FCC would benefit by reducing administrative costs.”

In 2014, the FCC granted lifetime credit for examination elements 3 and 4, but applicants seeking relicensing under that provision still must pass examination element 2.

From my ARRl newsletter todayhttp://www.arrl.org/news/new-amateur-extra-question-pool-puts-greater-emphasis-on-digital-sdrs-propagation
02/17/2016
The new Amateur Extra class license examination question pool, effective from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2020, now is available at the National Conference of Volunteer Coordinators (NCVEC) website. The latest revision contains a few minor corrections that had been released in a February 5 errata of the initial January 8 release. NCVEC Question Pool Committee Chair Rol Anders, K3RA, said the new pool represents a fairly significant change relative to the current question pool, which expires on June 30.

“The primary change is modernization of the pool to place more emphasis on digital communications, digital test equipment, software defined radios, and propagation/space weather,” he said. “Also, a number of other topics were added, including questions on some additional antenna types commonly used by radio amateurs.” Anders said that room to cover the new topics was made in the question pool by dropping some questions that had been in the expiring pool.

“Many of the questions removed were on topics which were felt to be of less importance to the current amateur population,” he said. “However, there was also some ‘evening out’ of difficulty in the removal of a number of questions felt to be inappropriately easy or difficult relative to the rest of the pool.” As a result, he said, the net number of questions grew from 700 to 712 questions.
All questions in the expiring pool were re-evaluated for possible clarification or improvement, and approximately 60 questions were slightly modified.

“All in all, the Question Pool Committee has worked to keep the Amateur Extra class exam up to date, to provide a high-quality examination, and to ensure that the incoming Extra class amateurs are well-qualified to be leaders in the hobby,” Anders said.

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EDIT 2/7/2016: I have been asked for close ups of the MulitCam Commo sock cover that I bought through Tactical Concealment. That photo is added down in the body of this article.

I have a confession to make…….. I live in a HOA!

I know most hams say what the hell you did that for, you knew you could not put up a 60 foot tower. Turn in your FCC license…..

Well I am here to tell you that even in a HOA you can have antennas that are very stealthy and be usable for anything from local work in UHF/VHF but also DX. Now are these antenna options as good as a giant tower with a beam, well no but they can be effective to very effective.

I will cover what I did to get a signal out, then I will cover other options I know about but have not tried yet.

I have been operating out of my current QTH for over five years with good success. When I started with my Yaesu 857D, I needed a simple set up from my antennas. In order to keep the costs down, I went with mono band PAR/LNR Precision End Fedz wires in 20 & 40 meters.

There are two antennas in this photo can you find them?

These antennas work great and do not need a tuner. Now I can hear the masses now saying “you could/should have built a resonant dipole….” “Real HAMS don’t buy antennas”…..”Turners are a crutch resonant antennas are the only way to go”…. And I am sure you can come up with others as well.

For me my shack is on the second floor of the house facing the street. No way to get stealth ladder line in here if I wanted and still have lighting protection/arrestors and a grounding rod.

The ARRL Section Manager Thomas Fagan came by my house and looked over my set up and I told him my options to use the large Alderica Pine tree in the front yard as cover for the wire antennas. The PAR/LNR wires are very thin and black and are hard to see even for the sidewalk 30 feet away.

The COAX runs out of the shack wall facing the street and into the garage. From there they go through the vent holes in the soffit boards under the eves, across the front of the house and into the back yard behind the fence.

I had my tree service guys climb up the tree and run the 30+ foot 20 meter vert and the 60+ feet 40 meter wires. The 20 meter went straight up and terminated with the end insulator wrapped with 550 cord around a big branch. The 40 meter wire is kind of an inverted L as it goes up about 45 feet, then sideways over a few more limbs with it is tied off.

To hide the feed lines coming through the block fence into the front yard, I had my friend at http://www.tacticalconcealment.com/default.cfm make me a MultiCam camo mesh sock to cover the feedline coming through the fence into the front yard. Its pulled out here to make it visible for the photo.

This is a close up of the MultiCam cammo sock that Tactical Concealment made for me. It works on coax or antenna supports like the painters pole i use for the ham stick dipole

You can see the open cells in the mesh which allow you to weave pine straw or jute type fibers in to the mesh to help it blend into any environment. All of that can be purchased at TC on the web link above. If you have further questions on thos material post a message below.

The back side of the fence is an entry box made by http://www.kf7p.com/KF7P/EntrancePanels.html. This allows me a way to keep RF out of the shack and provide a close to the antenna ground rod with lighting arrestors. You can see what the insides look like on his site. Best entrance panels around!!!!

This is what the inside of one of KF7Ps entrance panel looks like. This one is from WA2LLN off of the KF7Ps website, since mine only has 2 cables running into it I thought I would show this one as it shows the full capability of these panels.

I had the 20 running straight up to trunk but with the tree being 3 feet in dia, a lot of the signal was being blocked by the tree, so I had it lowered so that I can pull the base of it out in the front yard and run it as a “sloper”. I do this in the evening/night for obvious reasons. The PAR/LNRs are “directional” when sloped and has a main lobe in the direction of the match box at the bottom. I put this about 3 feet off the ground from this position I am aiming it from SW to NE from my AZ QTH.

Is this optimal, no but I can get on the air and don’t get harassed by the HOA as they do not own night vision……YET.
My next project is going to be a “hamsitck dipole” on a 24 foot painters pole that will be placed on the same side of the house where the entry panel is but back closer to the top of the roof on the left side. This should give me a rotatable dipole so I will have more directional capabilities, but I will need to turn it manually. As I get this put together I will post the results. UPDATE: A photo of this is below. Next post will be a combo blog and video of the build and tuning process for this ham stick dipole

WHAT ELSE IS THERE FOR HOA ANTENNA SETUPS?

Hams have radiated from metal rain gutters, metal fences, wooden fences with a wire running around the perimeter, a HF mobile antenna on their vehicle connected to the shack via coax running out of the garage and many other methods.

Depending on your back yard, you could use a fold over base for any vertical antenna and erect it at night in the dark. There are several makes out there. Here are a few

If you have trees in your yard, it helps as you can run a “random length wire” of a dipole around you property attaching it to trees.

You can buy bulk wire from HRO(Ham Radio Outlet) or even Amazon and run anything that will work. The goal is to get some radiation out. It does not have to be perfect, just try something and see how it works.

The MFJ 259B(thanks Paul Anova for the loan of your analyzer) showing a SWR of 1.4 at the midpoint in the 20 meter band. It took about an hour and 4 different positioning of the stainless steel wips into the fiberglass base of the hamstick.

This is sneak peek at the project and I will follow up with a very detailed build, tune and operation on 20 and 40 meters bands using both Phone and digital PSK31.

A good friend Chris Warren(of http://twentyfirstsummer.com/ and http://offgridham.com) , wrote a GREAT article about something all Amateur Radio Ops are interested in, Solar charging systems. Whether for off the grid living or running you radio remotely without a generator, capturing and converting solar energy into battery storage is a skill set every ham or prepper should know.

I will include a short piece of his article here and a link to his site so that you can read the entire article:

MPPT vs Non MPPT Solar Chargers

The solar charge controller is arguably the most important component of a solar energy system. Like the conductor of an orchestra, the solar charge controller makes it possible for all the other parts to work together. Understanding how a solar charge controller performs its task is important to planning for your own off grid energy needs.

Solar panels greater than 20 watts or so generally cannot be directly connected to a load because the voltages they produce are not compatible with most batteries and equipment: A “12 volt” panel can go as high as 17-19 volts in bright sunlight. And an obvious problem exists when you have a 24 or 48 volt solar array and a 12 volt load. A proper solar charge controller will take care of all these issues.

Why can’t they just make solar panels that produce the correct 12 volts? The nature of solar panels are that output can change quite a bit according to light levels, temperature, and many other factors. With current technology there is no such thing as a solar panel that will produce a stable voltage at all times, under all conditions. To get around this problem, solar panels are designed with a lot of extra wiggle room to allow for poor operating environments. Just as it would not be practical to have a car with the engine connected directly to the wheels, solar panels need a go-between to smooth everything out. The solar charge controller is to your off grid power system what the transmission is to your car.

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is the most common, least expensive, and easiest to deploy solar charge controller technology. Often incorrectly referred to as DC to DC converters, they are really switches similar to a switching power supply that match the source voltage (solar panel output) to the load voltage (usually a 12 volt battery).

PWM is relatively simple and has been around for decades. One disadvantage is that under most conditions a PWM solar charge controller will not take advantage of the full capacity of the panels. Ohm’s Law states that current is inversely proportional to voltage. Yet, a PWM solar controller will not do anything with current. When the high voltage from the panel is converted down to a useable 12 volt form, the current out will always be equal to or lesser than current in. This results in an unavoidable net loss of power. Here is an example of this idea from my own home solar power system:

I have 135 watt Kyocera panels with a rated output of 17.7 volts at 7.63 amps. Using Ohm’s Law:

17.7 volts x 7.63 amps = 135.051 watts

However, 17.7 volts is not useful to the amateur radio operator. The voltage needs to be converted down to approximately 13.5 volts to support a 12 volt battery and run amateur radio gear. Keep in mind that on a PWM solar controller, the output current will never exceed the input current:

13.5 volts x 7.63 amps = 103.005 watts.

In our real world example above, a standard PWM charge controller will give up over 30 watts of otherwise useable power. That is an immediate 24% loss before any other factors are included.

The chart below for a 12 volt system shows the main disadvantage of PWM devices. Notice that the maximum power point (MPP) of the panel is well outside the voltage range of the controller and is too high for amateur radio use. The strip of space between the left edge of the greyed area and the vertical dashed line represents throwaway power.

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